3 and a half years a lot of holding back.

Moving in circles as particles of loss.

I have been disturbed.

I’m sad you’re not hear to share a glass

To toast the ending of a missing

Your mirage has circled, punishing the guts.

Around you, I’m imagining a freedom begins.

Or within me, a feeling at the edges of the bones.

Down South, drums clear. Stars shine, sing with feet. Ancestral chimes before the World was alive: the joy is coming. It is seeping through the sky. The crow knows and flies.

The storytellers say: the sun is a force of change. Its light will cause all our stars to flame. We will breathe its mystery. In seasons, in thoughts, in the land and animals.

Not a leaf will fall and be unfelt, A word from the Creator go unheard, they say. Grief will fry in ancient songs and erupting, the Earth made new again.

Down South, the Old Man dreams.

She lies and in that perfect dark
A ripple merges
With a wave to break a thousand stars
She breaks
And leaves

For you I am
Delineated mistakes
Arms’ several holding
How I’ve let you down

For you I am
Learning
The gentle curve of movement from you
The passing of understanding
Lies bewildered again

For you I am
And in that surrendered
And in that overwhelmed
And in that found
For you I am

A varied subtle drink
A knowing faltering in pink
A candour with edges spilt
A wide-eyed supplicant filled in

Your eyes took a paler turn in the curtains of my arms

Producing words where your mouth should be

You spoke and destroyed me wordlessly

I have heard it told

That conversation you repeated

5 times a week to

Another unlistening ear

Generation of goodwill

Poured out of hessein sacks

To be trampled into dust

#

There could be more than this

Though you would often not know it

We reach for our favourite cup

Cook a meal with familiar ingredients

Though never the same food

It was a recipe your mother used to cook

And works fine for you

On odd days of the week

Pasta and ketchup pales

The other four

#

There could be more than this

You’ve heard it said

There could be…indeed was… a time

When it seemed to open up

Chance in your lap plucked

A sleeve to quell the frustrations

Of pains grown too slowly

Requests denied

Initiatives unacted upon

Erased for that single day

And without mercy

Took away the possibility

For an actual play

#

You were

Not invincible

Slightly scared that the

Universe should ask your opinion

Without you having to assert it

Into remote bushes of arguments

Where nothing ever gets done

This time it would happen

And falling about you

Was the chance you could

Cock up

It was liberating

So much so

You took another drink at the bar

And let this one pass you by

There could be more.

Roll me over YHWH

Breathe into my pores

Scarlet

Black

Vermilion

Shades

I have been a wandering desert sage

Crying your name for days without food

You owe me

Some payback

Right?

Roll me over YHWH

And cry through my veins

Webs of sin

Run clean again

Tarnish your good name

In pink and off-colour hues

My face in the sand

Whispering your good news

Roll me over YHWH

It’s been a while since you called

And spoke those

Astonishing words of yours

That calm the soul

And reap whirlwinds of me

Challenging you

My mercy

Beautified in deeds

Time to pray

And at your side

Quietly tell me

How

We could – just by looking – delight ourselves for days or more. Pick princely gems or suffer wounds because they only help us grow. You and I, my dear, winging in thrones and cased in rafters, tumbled in spider-webs and then clean again. Washed of reason and sense of being.

Tumbled in rapture and cast in spells; we allowed the words to come; syllable by fleeting syllable:

Dark dawns

Represses facet that is not felt or said

But is expressed as release

Two poles of a sphere come together

Itself to disappear

This is the learning and the learned

The fighting and the sky

The love in a terrible beauty

The asking to be free

So pure. So meaningless. So captive and liberated.

~ o ~

How futile is life?

How fragile.

How valuable.